Our 2022 Short Forms Contest is judged by Alix Ohlin! Alix Ohlin is the author of six books, mostly recently the novel Dual Citizens and the story collection We Want What We Want. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Best American Short Stories, and many other...
“Transcendent Expectation” is the Third Place winner for Room’s 2022 Fiction Contest. Of this piece, judge Shashi Bhat writes: "Transcendent Expectation is a story about a modest prayer on a family road trip, felt deeply by its young protagonist. This piece is...
The judge for Room’s 2022 Fiction Contest is Shashi Bhat! Shashi Bhat is the author of The Most Precious Substance on Earth (McClelland & Stewart, Canada, Fall 2021; Grand Central Publishing, US, Spring 2022) and a short story collection forthcoming from...
Five writers have made our 2021 Fiction Contest Shortlist. A big thank you to our esteemed judge, Jenny Heijun Wills, for her careful consideration, and congrats to these talented writers! We Climbed Up Glaciers, by Rayne Weinstein Love with Responsibility, by...
“Good Friends We Have” is the honourable mention for Room’s Fiction Contest 2020. My grandmother said, you can’t choose your family, but you can choose your friends, so choose wisely. But I didn’t so much choose my friends as they chose me. At school, we clung...
“Pieces of Me” is the honourable mention of Room’s 2019 Fiction Contest as selected by judge Catherine Hernandez. I woke up one morning to bigger breasts. I’m not talking triangle pointies from puberty (which hit well over a decade ago), a few extra pounds from the...
“Baby Food” is the honourable mention of Room’s Short Forms Contest 2018 as selected by judge Hiromi Goto. We called it baby food. We were secretive and gleeful. At fourteen, we’d outrun our periods—literally—clomping down Kimberly Hill with such exaggerated...
“They Comes On the Ice” is the honourable mention of Room’s Poetry and Fiction Contest 2018 as selected by judge Zoe Whittall. The day I arrived on Fogo Island there was a polar bear loose in Joe Batt’s Arm. I had driven from St. Johns to Gander, caught the ferry from...
The Honourable Mention in our Winter 2017–2018 Short Forms Contest. She did her eyebrows in seventh grade, her pubic hair in eighth. By grade nine she had found the sweet spot between total visibility and inconvenient stealth: the downy patches above each temple,...
Our 2017 Fiction Contest Honourable Mention. Dead Amy Amy could be heavy-handed with obscure trends like silver hair or emerald green lipstick but when she showed up for brunch that Sunday morning, it was plain as day that she was dead. She was gorgeous but years...